Appearance is important when it comes to your working life—well, really any time you're relying heavily on first impressions and social perception. It's an unfortunate fact that remains one all the same: The book is often judged by its cover. This extends past basic aesthetics of dress and into body language and the way we communicate, giving others a wholly inaccurate impression of our trustworthiness and competency for a role or task. To make matters worse, everyone has their own understandin…

Mistakes and bad decisions happen, it's just a part of the decision making process. As Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, famously said, “'I have not failed, but found 1000 ways to not make a light bulb." The quote and attribution varies, but it's usually something along those lines. And that remains true, you don't know and can't learn until you pick a direction and try, but where this becomes an issue is when people and organizations obstinately refuse to course correct, refusing t…

“The worst they can say is no.” A piece of advice oft given to someone teetering on the precipice of uncertainty, deciding whether or not to make a request of someone from whom rejection is almost certain. It's the sort of tip that a friend gives you when you're agonizing about whether or not to ask out your crush who is way out of your league; they probably know you have no shot but the point is the fact that you're going to be rejected isn't reason enough to not ask at all…

When you've shown your superiors how well you can train new hires, you'd usually expect that you would be first up for promotion—after all, one can only train and teach effectively once they have mastery over that which they are teaching. But this isn't always the case… There are a number of untold reasons why your boss might not consider you for an open management position or even to be future management material. Some of these reasons might have substance, while some of them might be complete…

The willingness of superiors to apply rules to themselves that they make for others speaks volumes to the character and quality of an organization. An undercurrent of issues surrounding fairness in leadership can give you a great indication of the toxicity of the workplace. This reaches levels of ridiculousness that can't be rationalized when it begins involving matters that aren't even specifically related to your performance or time that you spend at work and begins leaching into personal and…

There are things in life that you'll encounter, and you'll find nothing you've encountered previously has properly prepared you for it. Usually, these things will be so off-the-wall that there's no way anything could have properly anticipated them. The very idea of being flown out to a final interview and accepting a position, enjoying lavish dinner with the company's owner, only to go into the office and meet the guy who has just started working in the role you thought you had been accepting,…

Sometimes, when you mess around too much, you find out the hard way that there are very real consequences associated with your actions. It's all well and good for you to do as you'd like and act as you please, but when it comes to facing the consequences you'd better come to terms with it. That's what this employer is going to have to do when they realize that their driver went ahead and found another job (with better pay) after being told that his job was no longer available when he tried to c…

Generally, in your working life, you might expect that, as you gain experience, skills, and knowledge, you'll be making more money… throughout your career as well as your time in a singular role. Where you might not be too surprised and even expect to be rejected a request for a raise or two, you'd never expect to have your boss approach you telling you that they're slashing your pay in order to get “more bang for their buck." Openly telling you that they're going to be saving money solely at y…

When enforcing strict adherence to company policy and legal employment obligations, it's probably important that you understand those obligations first. It's also incredibly likely that someone who has been navigating the ins and outs of those legal obligations out of necessity for their livelihood will know more about them than you, an average Joe manager, do. Just an important reminder of the fact that being in charge doesn't necessarily mean that you have the most experience in every given s…

Being the longest-standing member of your workgroup usually means that you have memories of how things “used” to be, memories of the “before times” that probably stretch back long before even your manager worked here. The problem with this is organizations almost always trend in a negative direction when it comes to working conditions and benefits for workers; after all, there are only two ways to maximize profit, and cutting costs is far easier than increasing revenue generation. As a result,…

These days, it's not unusual to hear back from a job you applied to months ago asking if you're still interested in that first-round interview, and—hey, things happen and there are any number of reasons why the hiring process for the position you applied to might have gotten delayed. Sometimes, hiring gets sidelined in favor of more pressing concerns that the management team is dealing with. Sometimes, there is not quite as much room in the budget as management thought there was. Maybe they had…

The promise of promotion is a proverbial carrot on a stick that often gets dangled over workers' heads, encouraging them to do more and work harder for longer hours, taking on additional responsibilities, under the guise that this “growth” will soon earn them a promotion that pays them properly for the work they have been doing. Of course, while this holds merit when honest intentions are had, all too often this is exploited to get workers to do things they're not being paid to do… This employe…

You never know what you've got until it's gone… An old philosophical adage that rings true throughout all areas of our lives, speaking to the fact that we don't really appreciate something's worth until we no longer have it, whether that be a time in our lives, an object, or even an individual. It's easy to take things for granted when they're right in front of you, and it's easy to think that how things are now is how they will be forever, evoking a resigned, almost begrudging feeling towards…

There's this interesting thing that happens with KPIs, targets, and business focus. Sure, putting impetus into these areas will usually result in increasing them, creating the image of a larger, healthier, more profitable business. But what is the cost? More, importantly, where is the cost? You're not looking for it, you're not tracking it, and you won't know what it is and probably won't even know where it was or how to measure it until it's too late. This happens all the time in businesses wh…

Even if the business has needs for weekend coverage or is experiencing an emergency period of high load and you did need your workers to work an additional day… it would be best to—no, anyone in their right mind would—approach the subject delicately, respectfully, and tactfully. Coming out and declaring to your workers that they should “Kiss their weekend hiking trips goodbye” or anything of that nature would be downright inadvisable… Especially when it's intended to be a pointed comment person…

In jobs and industries that operate off of shift work “The Schedule” is hailed by management as an ancient relic of extreme importance